Where does Victorian Christmas come from?

I was up early to tangle with the snow again today. Unfortunately, my road has not been plowed yet (36 hours after the snow started) so I had to abandon my car in a neighbour's driveway yesterday night. I should mention that I live on a dirt road on the side of the North Mountain so I am familiar with being last on the plowing list. I trudged through the knee deep snow, reclaimed my car and met Ian Lawrence at the O'Dell House Museum.

Ian and I have been collecting the greenery for Victorian Christmas for a number of years now. Over the past thirty years, this event has become a staple of the Holiday season in Annapolis Royal. Key to the event are the elaborate decorations made from things found in the forest or grown in the garden. I will have some future posts about all of the sights, sounds and tastes of Victorian Christmas.

This is the first year that we have had to go to the woods after a heavy snowfall. Like most things, a little preparation and some warm clothes and we were fine. The image at the top shows the path we took to find our fir boughs and beech leaves. Looking closely, you can see my trimmers standing up in the snow on the left side. Thankfully, fir grows well along the South Mountain so we never have that much difficulty collecting what we need. The second image shows Ian, saw in hand, looking for a tree to prune.

It is nice being in the woods of Nova Scotia on a snowy morning. It would be difficult to imagine a more peaceful location. The fact that today is a Sunday and we were not worried about being shot by a deer hunter also helped our state of peace.

As I feared, we have not yet been able to get to the spot where we collect club moss. Not only is the club moss buried, but the road is not passable. Hopefully, we will have a bit of warmer weather later in the week so we can get back into the woods. Club moss has become one of my favorite parts of the event since I am always explaining what it is.

I will actually add something a bit different to this post. This will be one of the few times that I ever put up a photograph of yours truly on the blog. I am usually on the photographer end of the camera so there are not many pictures of me (fewer still that I would post online). I also do not tend to jump toward the limelight so this will be a rarity.

All for now,
RGS